


A Penny For a Spool of Thread

by Glitter_Lisp



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Protective Chad Charming, Sibling Bonding, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 19:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20783951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitter_Lisp/pseuds/Glitter_Lisp
Summary: He thinks of his mother. He thinks of Dizzy.





	A Penny For a Spool of Thread

Chad Charming may be self-absorbed and sometimes petty, but he loves his mother. He knows what her childhood was like, and who made it that way. He’s always hated Lady Tremaine in a distant sort of way, her and her daughters, but he’s known that he (and his mother, who never deserved any of it, who came out so strong and wonderful and loving) never had to worry about them.

Except now they do. Now the Tremaines are wandering Auradon freely, and Cinderella says she’s made peace with that fact. Chad hasn’t.

Which is why it’s hard, _so hard,_ to see this bouncy colorful little girl running around and gasping in delight at every new treasure she discovers. He sees her, and overlaid he sees her grandmother causing the burn scars on his mother’s gentle hands. Needle-point pricks on her fingertips. Flinches at raised voices even now, decades later. He thinks of his mother, a little girl with no one to turn to.

He thinks of Dizzy. A little girl, trapped on a prison island, raised by the same people made even more bitter and cruel after years of banishment and isolation. He thinks of Dizzy’s determined, aggressive joy. Her refusal to be anything other than happy, her permanent gritted-teeth smile and her unblinking wide-eyed excitement. He thinks of a tiny little girl growing up on the Isle of the Lost, under her family’s thumb and their oh-so-tender care. He thinks that this is a girl who has known all her life that there will never be a prince to come save her.

He drops down onto the grass next to her. She’s on the campus quad, sketchbook lying open in her lap, distracted by staring up at the clouds with her mouth hanging open. She jumps when he sits next to her and looks at him warily. She knows who he is, of course. He’s Chad Charming, everyone knows who he is. Dizzy… maybe knows a little differently.

“Don’t think we’ve been officially introduced yet,” he says breezily, holding out his right hand. Dizzy eyes it for a moment, then puts her own hand, small and painfully thin, into his.

He bends over and smacks a loud, ridiculous kiss on the back of it, nearly blowing a raspberry against her skin. She lets out a surprised squeak of laughter and snatches it back. He grins at her.

“I’m Chad. We’re basically cousins.”


End file.
